A Quiet Watercourse

I clocked a post over on Mystery Messiah the other day, it’s a good read, but I couldn’t respond as I’m on Blogger beta and we can’t add comments to non-beta blogs yet. Still, that gives me a little fuel for my own meanderings, and I feel I have more space to write here.

Why do things happen, is there a reason, is someone in control? In my view, the answer is not quite what we think. If I answer from a secular viewpoint, the reflex answer is “heck, no!”, but as a Taoist my answer is a little more involved.

In my view, everything that happens does so because of the tao of the people involved, the tao of the place/environment it happens in and the tao of the situation, which stems from its history.

An example? Let’s consider the RMS Titanic.

1. The tao of the situation. The ship was further south than was normal, iceberg warnings were ignored and the ship was going too fast and (allegedly) without due care.
2. The tao of the environment. Though the sea was calm, there were icebergs about, it was not as safe a place as it could have been.
3. The tao of the ship. The rudder was too small for that size of ship and there were not enough lifeboats aboard. Safety law and procedures at the time were not right for a ship of that size.
4. The tao of the people. There was a 1 hour(!) delay between the collision and the lowering of lifeboats, iceberg warnings weren’t heeded, the first officer inadvertantly mishandled the evasive procedures, some people refused to get into the lifeboats.

Sometimes though, we don’t have all the information, things happen because of factors we had no way of knowing about. It’s tempting to start thinking of a cruel fate, or a mysterious god, but the truth is there is always the unknown.

All these things (taos with a small t?) have their ultimate source in the Tao, and indeed, are as much a part of it as anything else. The Tao Te Ching says the Tao is unknowable and unnameable, it’s not mystic, who can honestly keep track of all the factors I just described above? All of it? Now expand it to cover the state of the whole universe known and unknown, and it certainly can’t be done! I think all we can do is realise that it’s all ultimately rational, and be humble in the knowledge that we’ll never understand all of it. As Lao Tzu says “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao”.

Footnote: I’ve explained it as well as I can at this time, but I will be refining this further, it will also eventually make an appearance in the Book of Jade Mirrors